The Lion King

The Lion King shocked the movie industry by becoming a hit all over again in 2011 in its 3D theatrical re-release, just weeks before its hi-def home video debut (in 2D and 3D editions). Add this to the smash hit, Tony Award-winning Broadway musical adaptation, and it's impossibly to deny the film's widespread cultural impact. The story may not be as personally accessible for kids as some others in the Disney canon, but it's not hard to understand why The Lion King's good-vs.-evil adventure and high-spirited comic passages haven't lost their appeal.

Surely some will find the embrace of royal succession dubious (especially as celebrated in the energetic musical number "I Just Can't Wait to Be King"), but it makes perfect sense in the anthropomorphized world of The Lion King, and the universal aspects of a boy eager to grow into adulthood, looking up to his father, and feeling a pressure to achieve don't lack for resonance. With one Oscar-nominated song, The Lion King also famously instructs kids about "The Circle of Life" (and death), the center of a Bambi-esque prologue exalting the natural setting and its denizens. Composer Elton John and lyricist Tim Rice won the Oscar for love song "Can You Feel the Love Tonight," but it's "Hakuna Matata" that's best remembered for the intersection of Lane and Sabella's Borscht Belt-style comedy stylings and Swahili philosophy ("no worries"). (The fifth song, "Be Prepared," positions talk-singing Jeremy Irons as a big-cat fascist.)

Don't buy the common line that The Lion King evokes Hamlet; the screenplay credited to Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts and Linda Woolverton hews more closely to Biblical epic than the Bard (and perhaps most closely to anime Kimba the White Lion, but that's a controversy for another day). At 87 minutes, the picture works in spite of its herky-jerky narrative, which could stand a bit of fleshing out in the third act. The terrific voice cast goes a long way, with the comic support of Lane, Sabella and Atkinson proving positively invaluable, and the colorful animation consistently impresses, whether in creative abstraction ("I Just Can't Wait to Be King") or naturalistic nature-film action (the centerpiece wildebeest stampede).

Disney goes whole (wart)hog for The Lion King with its Diamond Edition hi-def premiere, available in a Blu-ray 3D + Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy combo pack (also available in Blu-ray + DVD combo pack). The 3D presentation is well worth the bump in price, for 3D TV owners. Nearly as impressive as Beauty and the Beast in 3D, The Lion King doesn't seem like the post-conversion it is: this was always a film designed with planes of depth (something of a Disney animation tradition), and 3D just allows more dynamic separation of those planes. Certainly the wildebeest stampede puts the film's best 3D paw forward, but the format also adds pizazz to the musical numbers and the depiction of the natural settings throughout (as for the potential pitfall of crosstalk, it is present, but only fleetingly). All this above and beyond the excellence of the 2D transfer, also included here. Colors are brilliant, black level bottomless, and detail outstanding. Put simply, this is a gorgeous transfer, with a 3D punchup that makes a valid alternate version of the film. As for the audio, in DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 surround, The LionKing's music has never sounded fuller, and the effects have never been more thunderous for home theaters. Precision separation and a dynamic range that's jaw-dropping make this a powerful (and, at times, even subtle) listening experience.

The extensive bonus features start with the now requisite Disney Second Screen feature, which allows one to sync up playback of the movie to one's iPad or computer to access fun facts, design galleries, behind-the-scenes video clips, the original September 1992 story outline, and various kid-friendly games and activities. Meanwhile, Sing-Along Mode amounts to subtitles for the musical numbers.

Also included is the vintage audio commentary by producer Don Hahn and directors Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff. It's a terrific historical document with lots of behind-the-scenes secrets about the film's development and production, and the many changes made along the way.